ATLANTA – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is relying on software from TheraDoc, as well as a tool of its own making, to gather daily reports on antimicrobial use and resistance for a pilot project to address the so-called “superbugs” impact on public health.
The information used to be gathered by hand, explained Jonathan Edwards, mathematical statistician at the CDC and a member of the National Healthcare Safety Network eSurveillance Project team. By doing away with data entry and moving to real-time software, Edwards said, it’s like “setting up a system of water works, instead of filling up a bucket.”
University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, were the first two institutions to report using the TheraDoc Expert System Platform, along with Infection Control Assistant and Antibiotic Assistant. Utah served as the beta-testing site, transmitting data for two years, while Northwestern began supplying data via TheraDoc in August 2006.
Edwards said some other pilot sites, which he declined to name because of confidentiality issues, are using another tool that was built at the CDC. He said five hospitals in total are reporting data, with the possibility of a few others coming on line in the next few months.
As the project moves ahead, Edwards said, “We are learning how to best set this up and are developing some standards for collecting these data through electronic means.”
He said progress is being made in terms of “how we pack up the data,” with the next step focused on “issues of vocabulary and standardization of codes.”
Once the documentation is in place, he said, then hospitals can follow the implementation process.
Stan Pestotnik, president and chief operating officer at Salt Lake City-based TheraDoc, said his company’s participation was an outgrowth of informatics used for monitoring infections. The company was knowledgeable in HL7 messaging, noted CDC’s Edwards.
“This was just a natural coalescence,” Pestotnik said. He said CDC talked about what it wanted for antimicrobial use and resistance.
One of the requirements, said Pestotnik, was mandated, non-negotiable adherence to standards. Through TheraDoc’s technology, he said, hospital users meet the mandatory reporting requirements.
